Prep work by PD Singer Read Free Book Online Page A

haven’t been out to buy condoms. It didn’t seem like there was much point.”
    No, not after I’d left. “In a fit of extreme hopefulness, I got some.”
    “Seeing to my mise en place again, are you?” Tommy’s smile was broad enough to reveal the twisted bicuspid that didn’t quite hide behind the canine, and I wondered how many other ways I could bring that grin. Right now I covered it with my own lips, and we quit talking.
    Lord, Tommy was as oral as I, his tongue finding mine for soft strokes that grew firmer, wilder, sliding across my cheek and down my neck. Taking time to really explore would have to wait. Right then I needed more than anything to feel the strength of his desire, to know his urgency, to be welcomed in all at once. We tried to strip each other and succeeded in landing on the floor in a tangle of denim and jersey that only came off when we remembered to kick away our shoes.
    He splayed me across the giant cabbage roses on the floor, the worn Axminster carpet scraping my butt while he kissed his way across my belly, rubbed his face across the skin, and brought me curving up to implore him not to stop with the one little lick across the head of my erection. He only laughed.
    Strong, scarred hands pinned my hips, and he set to slurping me in, sucking me down with abandon. Twining my fingers into his hair, I could only wish to reach more of him, but he made me wait, until suddenly I couldn’t wait any longer, exploding from somewhere deep within.
    He held me in his mouth until the shaking stopped, then brought a few more shudders in the long, warm letting go. “Turn about,” I wheezed, meaning fair play, but he swiveled, bringing his haunch into patting range. “Sit on the couch.”
    I could get to my knees unaided, but didn’t try to rise farther. Tommy bent to me, lips to lips for a moment, the tang of my fluids on his tongue. A moment to rest against his chest, to hear his heart thudding, and then my mouth was against his cock, which had been a hard and pulsing column against my chest while I listened to the warm beat of his life. I savored him, tasting, engulfing, feeling the play of textures, soft, hard, velvet and scratch, licking the salt and breathing the musk, until he too was undone, filling my mouth.
    Tommy’s heart beat hard, the wild pounding calming under my ear when I slipped my arms around him to lean against his chest again. The soft hairs tickled the side of my nose, his strong arms across my shoulders reminding me that I had come much too close to flying away from this joy.
    “I’m glad you came back,” Tommy eventually murmured into my hair, where his lips had been resting. “And I’d love to stay like this the rest of the afternoon, but I still haven’t decided on what goes with the chops for the special.”
    “Mmmm, what was nice at the market this morning?” I could think like a chef with the part of my brain that wasn’t focused on skin pressed to skin. A small part, true.
    “Cherry tomatoes, fennel to braise with orange, some Kalamata olives to broil in bacon for starters. Granny Smith apples; I thought I’d do a tarte tatin with those. I only do one sweet, take it or leave it.” His little sigh reminded me he’d said he wasn’t much of a pastry chef.
    Even so, a one-man operation had only so much time. The pâtissiers often came to work in the early morning and were done with their magic before lunch service started in the finer restaurants, their relatively good hours earning them the reputation as the wusses of the culinary world, but how many people with conflicting needs for oven space could one kitchen accommodate? When some of my old line cooks got to slamming around, every cake in the place would fall flat. Hell, I’d slain a cake or two with my temper.
    “It wasn’t a terribly balanced selection,” Tommy concluded.
    “But not undoable.” I’d unbalanced him—I needed to help him recover. “What do you have on hand in the way of cheese?”